It was as if someone had simply pulled the plug on the entire world. Sierra's whole body tensed up as all the thrill of the past hour fluttered away. In the distance, a murky glow emanated from the direction of Manhattan, but it was a cloudy night and she couldn't quite tell how far the black out reached. From somewhere close by came the screech of breaks, a horn and cursing. Urgent sirens wailed out into the darkness from different directions.
If the lights go out for good we are lost.
As Sierra's eyes adjusted to the darkness she made out the ghostly outline of the archway over Grand Army Plaza. A cop car came racing down Eastern Parkway, its frantic blue and red strobes splattering out across the darkness. It let out two high-pitched blurts of the siren and zipped off towards Flatbush Ave. Somewhere people yelled back and forth to each other like a citywide game of Marco Polo.
"Why so serious?" a small voice asked from behind her. Sierra dropped her board to the ground and turned quickly around, her fists raised. There was nothing there. The elaborate stone gates of Prospect Park opened into a vast emptiness that made her shudder. From the air directly in front of her, the voice let out a good-natured chuckle. Then she saw it, sort of: a silky plume of light gray smoke accumulating before her eyes. Sierra took a few steps back, half wanting to jump on her board and disappear into the blacked out streets of Brooklyn, half frozen by terror and fascination. She took a deep breath and was startled to find that the thick musty smell of Malagueñas filled the air around her. The cloud of smoke formed itself into a roundish shape roughly the size of a couch cushion and hovered just above the ground, jiggling ever so slightly. It appeared to be laughing.
"El oh well..." said the voice.
"Excuse me?"
Another few chuckles. "Come with me," the cloud said.
"The hell I will."
"Come on, mami, we going into the park." Its accent was not quite Puerto Rican but not Dominican either. A certain melodic mischievousness lurked between each word, and in spite of herself, Sierra actually wanted to go with him.
"I don't talk to strangers. Especially when they're clouds of smoke."
"You talk to walls though, eh?"
"How did you know...?" Several puzzle pieces clicked together inside her racing mind. "The plume of smoke. Of course. The murals. You're the one been changing the murals?"
"No, mami," laughed the cloud. "No, but I been keeping my eye on you, you know, from time to time, checking in. But listen- you come with me now, okay? We going in the park."
"What makes you think I'm going anywhere with you, least of all a dark empty deserted field? You crazy?"
"You are the one talking to a cloud of smoke." Another extended chortle came drifting out from in front of her. "Oh, el ohwell!" laughed the cloud. Sierra tried to suppress a smile but the laughter was contagious. And he had a point.
"Why do you keep saying that?" she demanded.
"¿Qúe?"
"Why do you keep saying..."
"That's how you laugh, no? I have been reading up on how to speak teenager American so we can communicate you and me."
"Been reading what?"
"You know, on the computer. Late at night. How you call them? Cuarto de conversar...talk rooms?
"You been messing around in chat rooms? No wonder. Look, it means Laughing Out Loud. El oh el. The letters. Get it?"
"Elemayo?"
Sierra laughed.
"Listen," the cloud said, "you come with me because I'm the one who gonna put the lights back on, okay? And you don't wanna be in the dark tonight, ok? Trust me. I know I'm a cloud of smoke and I scare you when I come up from behind like that but I'm okay, I'm not gonna hurt you, okay mami?"
As he spoke a dim constellation of lamplights sputtered grudgingly to life inside the park. The thudding of helicopters droned towards them from the distance. Search lights cut through the clouds over downtown Brooklyn.
"Ok," she said. "But no funny stuff, no nonsense. I will hurt you."
"Ok," chuckled the cloud, and he glided off through the gates into the slowly illuminating park.
They winded along a footpath that encircled the main lawn and Sierra found herself surprisingly at ease with her misty companion. As they moved through the park, the lampposts around them twinkled alive like sleepy fireflies.
"You gonna show me what you really look like, Mr. Cloud?"
"My name is Biaque," said the cloud. A malagueña sat roughly where his mouth would be, its red ashen tip sending little tracers as it bounced along in the dark. "Biaque Elempelio Concepción de Culebra la Vaquera Donsinsón. To be exact," pronouncing each syllable of his name like a phrase from one of those romantic odes to fruit or naked women or whatever. "But you can call me Biaque. And yes, coming up I will show you what I look like, because yes, I am not just a cloud as you have guessed. I just need to find where I left mi jaqueta."
"You left your jacket in the park?"
"And mi gorro- my favorite hat."
Sierra suppressed another laugh.
"I think is over here, this way," said the cloud, indicating a smaller tributary path that led into the woods.
"Looks creepy," Sierra murmured as the crowding trees around them blotted out the last sprinklings of dim lamplight. Besides the milky glow emanating from Biaque's little nebula, they were again wrapped in darkness. Her guide sputtered along anyway, talking and singing to himself in a little stream of nonsensicals. "And maybe a little more to the left...Luuuuucera, ay mi Lucera...Culebra que se encierra mi pobre corazón...Or maybe is this way, perhaps...Luuuucera..."
"Um, are we lost, Mr. Biaque?"
"No, mi vida, we are just, you know, searching."
"For your clothes? Are you sure someone didn't move them for you while you were gone?"
"Yes I am sure, and is just Biaque, no mister. We don't use mister."
"Who's we?"
"Aha!" They stopped short in a small clearing. Sierra's eyes adjusted some, and she made out a child-size blazer, a sky blue guayabera and a smart looking Stetson hat with a red and black feather sticking out of the brim. They all dangled neatly from clothes hangers on a tree branch. Biaque floated quickly towards his clothes and started to fuss with the buttons on the guayabera. The dim outline of a spinal column appeared down the center of his cloud. Ghostly ribs formed around it, and before her very eyes a full skeleton gradually took shape.
Biaque turned around, a quite dapper little skeleton, and flashed an unnerving smile towards Sierra. She gave a start; his mouth was huge.
"¿Qué te pasa, mami? Oh, yes, this is a temporary, it takes, you know, a minute to get everything back. Comes piece by piece, you know?"
"Not really," said Sierra. Two warm, dark brown eyes stared back at her from the gray sockets. As she watched in amazement, layers of muscle and flesh emerged across the ghostly bones like floodwater spreading across a city.
"It's kind of gross maybe? For you?" Biaque offered with a hint of shyness.
"No," replies Sierra. "Just, you know, different. I'm sorry I don't mean to stare, I've just never seen anything...like that."
"No, no, is okay," Biaque waved an arm made of equal parts cloud, bone and flesh. "I understand."
Sierra could make out his face now and it reminded her of those wide-eyed salamanders they use to catch by the rivers when they would go visit family outside of San Juan. Biaque's skin was the shiny blue-green of a deep jungle lake. His long arms ended in slender, glistening fingers. His mouth, which stretched across the full length of his wide face, wore a perpetual half smirk, caught somewhere in between a smile and frown. It was Biaque's eyes though, that put Sierra at ease; strikingly human, those mahogany circles gazed back at her with laughter and curiosity.
"You're the one," Sierra said slowly, "that's been cleaning my Tío's room."
"Um, well no not so much actually but yes I do stop through occasionally to check in on him because we were very good friends back in the day."
"Then who?"
"His name is Tinibu. He is like my- how you say? Like my estudiante. But no, not quite..."
"Your pupil? Your follower?"
"No, no not that." Biaque circled a hand lightly in the air as if sorting through a rolodex of words. "I am his mentor."
"Oh! Okay...I guess I understand. I'd like to meet him."
"You will, he'll be along presently. You will like him; he's very powerful. He is what's called a hunterfy, like a messenger. But listen, nena, I know is nice to meet you and everything, but we have a lot to talk about, a lot of ground to cover, so for that you can be prepared."
"Prepared for what?"
"Well, firstly for the Council meeting in a little while and then for, well, for all that is to come."
"That's vague."
"Yes. Yes I know." Sadness entered his voice for the first time and Biaque looked at the ground.
"You wanna tell me bout this Council meeting I have to prepare for or you just gonna hover there and wait for me to ask all the right questions?"
"Yes, yes, I tell you." Another pause. "Come, come, it's better I show you." Biaque extended his long arm out towards Sierra. She stepped forward, allowing herself to be wrapped in it. The skin was surprisingly warm, and his grasp is comforting like her tío's hugs when she was little. The fearful voice inside her, the one that still couldn't believe she actually followed this creepy amphibian dude into a deserted woodsy area, had hushed to a distant whisper. And then, without warning, Biaque tightened his embrace and shot straight up into the night sky.